One of the joys of managing social media channels for The Corning Museum of Glass is the opportunity to see how visitors are experiencing our spaces. Each visitor brings a unique perspective to our collections, activities, and demonstrations. The Museum’s latest exhibition, New Glass Now, clearly inspired creativity in staff and visitors alike. As we enter the last few weeks of the exhibition, I wanted to look back at nine of the very best New Glass Now social media posts from this year.
Some of my favorite photos are those where visitors cleverly use the reflective nature of glass to their advantage, especially in selfies. This mirrors one of the exhibition’s key themes, which saw many contemporary artists deeply engaging with the phenomena glass can produce. I also really enjoyed seeing whole groups of people come together to take a photo; one of the cutest examples of this is the family who recreated the faces of Austin Stern’s pieces from his Little Monsters series.
Another favorite type of photo are the selfies visitors took with our interactive on the West Bridge. Inspired by Doris Darling’s Super Strong Lamp, the Museum created a cardboard replica of her lamp and encouraged visitors to pose with it like Doris does in the promotional image for the lamp.
As someone who works in social media, I loved that so many of our visitors were also drawn to the slide wall in New Glass Now | Context, on view at the Rakow Library. The wall replicates how selectors for the exhibition New Glass: A Worldwide Survey chose work based on slides that were placed on lightboxes. The wall’s layout is incredibly evocative of the grid you see on Instagram and the bright colors of the slides make for fun photos. I also loved that New Glass Now traveled beyond the Museum in the form of its merchandise – from what we saw on Instagram, New Glass Now made it to quite a few beaches this summer!
It’s been a pleasure to see how much our visitors have loved New Glass Now on social media. If you’re in the Corning area before January 5, 2020, I highly encourage you to come and experience New Glass Now for yourself. And while you’re at it, share your experiences with us on social media using #NewGlassNow; I’d love to see your take on it.